Garage Quaran-clean up

[bowditchsmith]

I came across this forum years ago shortly after purchasing our first home in 2014 and immediately came to the realization that I wasn’t going to have the garage that I wanted. It was a tight unfinished two car garage with one of the bays being almost inaccessible due to a narrow driveway, and it being tucked behind our house. It became a full time storage /work bay for our play car and motorcycle and a part time workshop / shed. Fast forward six years and a global pandemic later and we finally moved to a home that has more of what we have wanted and one that we can see ourselves living in for a significant period of time.

Our Old Garage:

The nightmare single wide driveway (couldn't open a car door without hitting the chimney or fence)

Moving during the pandemic was interesting, our offer was accepted two days before the US came to a standstill, and my wife and I both found out that we would be working from home. While we purged and prepped our old home for listing on the market we were migrating our way through the home setting up temporary work spaces.

In April we closed on our new home, and got a handful of projects underway that were better suited for addressing prior to moving in. (Refinished all the hardwood floors, added matching hardwood to our second floor, and lots of painting) in hindsight this would have been an awesome time to tackle the garage, but it quickly became the temporary storage area as we transitioned homes.

Our New home: 2.5 acre plot buried in the middle of nowhere (with plenty of room for expansion down the road)

Knowing that I wouldn’t have a bay for the project car for a bit, and not wanting to leave it outside for a few months, I made the decision to find it a new home, and figured would begin my search for its replacement once I had a proper place for it to stay.

Which brings us to the mess of a space that I am left to start with:

• The garage is a partially finished 22x21 separated bay garage.
• 2 8ft wide doors (not my preference, but what I’m stuck with now)
• It features a 6ft and 4 ft alcove (one on each side wall)
• Bays are separated by lally collums (gross)
• Side walls are cement
• Rear wall is drywall
• Lighting is trash
• Chain driven garage door openers are outdated,
• Shelving is absolutely left over from a previous kitchen.
• Peel and stick tile floor (going to be a nightmare to clean up)

Immediate Plan:

• Dumpster Rental
• All the Cabinets will go
• All the tile will be lifted
• Floors cleaned, degreased, etched and sealed
• Epoxy coating on floor
• Painting Walls
• Race Deck Flooring
• New Lighting
• All new steel cabinets, wheel rack, and work tops
• Some sort of modular wall paneling
• Tool Organization
• TV and dedicated garage computer

Mock up of wall paint and floor pattern:

Long term plans:

• Lally collum removal
• Air Compressor and water hook ups Inside of the garage.
• Build a bigger detached garage behind the house

My cabinets are ready for pick up, the flooring has arrived, and I need to officially get this project underway.

Boxes and Boxes of Flooring:

Ill be using the small textured coin against the back wall under the cabinets and along the high foot traffic areas to provide grip. and the free flow under the cars.

Floor Colors:
Small Coin HDXT - Black
Freeflow - Black
Freeflow - Alloy
Freeflow - Graphite
Freeflow - Red

Tonight I lifted a tile to see what kind of an undertaking I have ahead of me in term of removing the adhesive from the floor. It’s going to take a bit, but I want to do it right. Goof-off rubbed in seemed to work really well on the test spot, but we’ll see how this process goes 500+square feet into the project.

Goals for this current garage will be primarily just for the cars and the toys. I have a shed in the back lot that will house the mower, blower, and all the yard stuff.

Looking forward to sharing my journey with you all, this forum has been incredibly inspirational, and the builds you have all contributed have been amazing.

 

[Jayman17]

Congrats on your new place, that's a nice looking home and garage. I'll be following along for the progress.

Jay

 

[jblnut]

That is a seriously awesome first post with enough detail that you have no choice to finish the project and let us all help from afar

The house looks like a major improvement over the last one with a lot of nice looking landscaping already done. How much space out back is there to build a larger garage ?

 

[bowditchsmith]

Congrats on your new place, that's a nice looking home and garage. I'll be following along for the progress.

Jay

Haha, much appreciated!

That is a seriously awesome first post with enough detail that you have no choice to finish the project and let us all help from afar

The house looks like a major improvement over the last one with a lot of nice looking landscaping already done. How much space out back is there to build a larger garage ?

Thank you! it's been a huge change for us. We didn't necessarily outgrow our previous house, but it was on a 10,000 square ft plot in the city, and the street parking was getting to be so frustrating. I lived about a half a mile from work, which was nice in theory, but I actually really enjoy driving which I was missing out on without a substantial detour. And with two dogs who love to be active, we used it as an excuse to find something in a town we wouldn't find on a map. There is nothing out here, but most things are accessible within a 10-20 drive. The local racetrack is only 12 minutes away which was a huge bonus, so I expect to be getting some track time in once we have the right car picked out.


We now have about 2.5 acres, with about 1.5 of that is behind the house which is nice, so plenty of room for future expansion. Part of that is taken up by a patio and an in-ground pool right now, but I have some ideas in mind.The basement is a finished walk in from the garage, which we will use as a home gym / part time motorcycle bay (ideal, but needs wife sign-off) / recreational area with a pool table and tv.

 

[crackerjack9]

you mentioned in the first post you will do Epoxy flooring and RaceDeck tiles... two separate areas?

 

[bowditchsmith]

you mentioned in the first post you will do Epoxy flooring and RaceDeck tiles... two separate areas?

I'm planning to do an epoxy floor underneath the race deck flooring. I want to ensure that the cement underneath is treated. and I am using it as an opportunity to get a bit more uniformity to the color of the floor (that will be visible through the free flow, along with ensuring that it is easy to clean. This will be a working garage, so I want to be able to quickly power wash it.

 

[dscable]

Following this one for sure! Can't wait to see the transformation and love the floor!

 

[bowditchsmith]

alright, tried a couple of methods on a few different tiles this afternoon during lunch. figured I would find the best way to proceed with the next 503 tiles so that I am still scraping on my hands and knees this time next year. due to how much glue gets left on the floor from these tiles, I have found that Goof-off does a good job of lifting the adhesive, but it does need to be scraped off of the concrete as it gums up in clumps. This glue is brutal if it gets on your hands, so I highly recommend gloves in order to proceed.

6 Tiles in, and I can tell this is going to be a challenge. each tile tears up with relative ease, but it tears due to the age. I'll try a scraper on an extension to see if I can lift them from a stool or something.

Process currently involves skimming the goof-off over the concrete, letting it sit for a couple of minutes, and scraping, degreasing, and washing off with a hose. I think I can get a good assembly line working for this where I will lift a few while solution is soaking on another grouping of exposed cement, and I can obviously degrease and hose off in larger sections to save time. My wife is already shaking her head on this one, but I have her support as long as she ends up with a bay!

Underneath the tile there was some signs of previous paint work, I hope that if the deep clean and etch don't take this up, it will be bonded enough to not create problems with the epoxy.

 

[bowditchsmith]

alright, I swung down to the garage for a few minutes between confrence calls today. Would love to set my temporary work space up from the garage this fall, but I think I might get too disracted.

Anyways, knocked out 21 tiles, 488 to go, I dont think this is going to happen by hand. So I started searching the internet for a better solution. Came across an Eddy Floor Compact Stripper tool that can be rented from Home depot. Should hopefully help to make quicker work of the tile removal

I'm expecting to find a painted floor underneath that was worn down from tires entering in and out of the garage.

 

[CombatNinja]

I'm all about brute force and ignorance when it comes to getting **** done but you are completely out of your mind if you think you are going to do that whole floor with little cans of Goof-Off and a ****** paint scraper. Get a digging iron, scrape that **** up and rent a grinder to grind off the adhesive. You will be done in a loooooong day (as opposed to weeks).

Also related to the floor: you realize that for the price of epoxy and RaceDeck, you could have yourself a beautiful porcelain tile floor, right? If you ultimately want RaceDeck, just put down a cheap sealant and be done with it.

 

[bowditchsmith]

I'm all about brute force and ignorance when it comes to getting **** done but you are completely out of your mind if you think you are going to do that whole floor with little cans of Goof-Off and a ****** paint scraper. Get a digging iron, scrape that **** up and rent a grinder to grind off the adhesive. You will be done in a loooooong day (as opposed to weeks).

Also related to the floor: you realize that for the price of epoxy and RaceDeck, you could have yourself a beautiful porcelain tile floor, right? If you ultimately want RaceDeck, just put down a cheap sealant and be done with it.

I apreciate the concern. I wasn’t intending to do this entire project with a small bottle, and scrapers. I was simply testing various products to see what was netting the quickest result, so that I could buy a large quantity this weekend. I generally like to test things out prior to executing.

A grinder is a great suggestion for the adhesive, I was under the impression that they were better suited for dry / hardened adhesive and that the tacky glue would gum the machine up. ill look into this now. Thanks for the recommendation.

As far as the epoxy under the racedeck is concerned, i was looking to maximize the efficiency of the subfloor in term of ease to clean. a sealant wound be fine, I just don’t have too much visibility to what I am going to be looking at once all the tile was pulled up, so I was using the "epoxy" stage as an opportunity to get some uniformity to the surface, color and how it will be visible along the outer walls, and through the freeflow panels.

I got a great deal on the flooring, and I am certain that this project will fall well below the cost of installing porcelain through out the entire garage.

 

[loganb]

A dedicated rental place will likely have a ride on tile stripper that will make quick work of that project so you can move onto next steps within hours. I'd also look at the grinder option, a light pass should clean it up well and give a consistent appearance. Highly recommend if you do a grinder to rent the dust collector with it since this is tuck under and that **** gets everywhere

Sent from The Garage Journal mobile app

 

[navin]

If you have a sawzall there are bits they make for scraping @Lowes. As for the leftover residue you can buy the dimabrush attachment at Home Depot for $60-70 and it will take care of it easily.

 

[bowditchsmith]

Making quick work of this floor today, but the weather has not been on my side. Hoping to see a break in the clouds / rain later on today so that I can move more stuff outside.

Within about an hour I knocked out abut 35% of the tiles with a large floor scraper. Not bad timing, and I'm not feeling much fatigue in my hands which is nice. Some of the tiles come up quick while others just chip and splinter.

I have a few sets of wheels to unload this weekend!







It looks like the floor was dealing with some heavy soiling, I am sure partly from all the new England winter salts. I'll be looking forward to taking a lot of this up and getting a uniform color down on the floor.

 

[CombatNinja]

Have at that with a grinder and then hit it with a flood coat of penetrating sealer and you will be good to go. I would 1000% advise against epoxy based on what I am seeing.

 

[bowditchsmith]

Have at that with a grinder and then hit it with a flood coat of penetrating sealer and you will be good to go. I would 1000% advise against epoxy based on what I am seeing.

Appreciate the recommendation. I might just take that advice, and stick with painting the cement around the edge black to help blend the transition.

Feeling a good burn as I plow past the 50%

266 tiles down, but overall pleased to find the floor crack free so far.









This corner must have had spilled paint or some white chemical trapped under the tile. It was soaked, and tracked around the garage and part of the driveway on my shoe.

 

[bowditchsmith]

Took a break from the tile remove to turn my attention towards assessing the walls and ceiling.

The previous owner had performed an energy audit on the home which was awesome to have done, however in a number of areas they went a bit excessive with the spray foam. My garage door supports look like they have fungus or coral growth all over them, so I did a little bit of clean up.







I'll clean them up a bit more and probably seal them up with some joint compound before I paint the ceiling.

Does anyone paint their garage door track hardware? Outside of the center of the track, it doesnt seem like it's a high contact area, and I think it would make a drastic visual improvement.

 

[Jayman17]

I've seen another member on GJ with painted (maybe powder coated) rails and they looked really good, a big improvement. His were red.
Keep up the good work, you are making progress.

Jay

 

[bowditchsmith]

I've seen another member on GJ with painted (maybe powder coated) rails and they looked really good, a big improvement. His were red.
Keep up the good work, you are making progress.

Jay

Hmm, I'll have to look for those. I would ideally be looking to paint mine black.

Today was kind of wasted. I had so.many errands to run before a dinner that we had with a visiting family member. Didn't get to make progress on the garage, but I picked up tb rear lockers and cabinets.

Tomorrow morning will be adhesive removal, so that I can move everything for the left bay over to the right, and tackle the tiles on the other side. I should have a dumpster arriving prior to next weekend, so all of the existing ”ex-kitchen” cabinets and shelving will be tossed, and I will be able to start on wall clean up and maybe some paint.

 

[Jayman17]

You can see some photos of his red powder coated tracks/hardware in post #53 of his thread, "Craig's Colorado Car Condo". His username is Craig Balzer.
Sorry I don't know how to post a link or the photos he posted.

Jay

 

[bowditchsmith]

You can see some photos of his red powder coated tracks/hardware in post #53 of his thread, "Craig's Colorado Car Condo". His username is Craig Balzer.
Sorry I don't know how to post a link or the photos he posted.

Jay

No worries! that was more than enough info to track it down!

Craig Balzer's phots below:

It looks fantastic! I think I am going to tackle painting mine black!

 

[bowditchsmith]

Cleaned out in preparation for removing the adhesive.



Adhesive removal applied to the entire floor. The mix calls for allowing 1-3 hours of saruration prior to scraping up.



First puddle scraped up. Some pretty grimy looking stuff, but it made quick work!



Last step involved rinsing the floor with a mop. Which I was pleased to see pulled up a lot of the surface paint that was there from the previous owner.





Rinsed off, letting it dry before moving stuff over from the other side.



Cabinets arrived, they might spend some time on the trailer for a few days while I get everything sorted.

 

[qwerty18]

will be following along....

 

[bowditchsmith]

Dumpster arrived this morning, so I got to work on getting all of the old shelving and kitchen cabinets out of there








Sadly I waiting to take photos until the majority of the work was tackled. Sorry GJ for the hole in the progress.




And after all the cabinets were pulled, peg board removed, shelving, and a few hundred randomly places nails












Finally getting some space back!

 

[bowditchsmith]

Hit a patch of good luck today. Got the adhesive off the floor and after some quick investigation i discovered that the existing concrete floor had a sealant on it already. I think that explains why the “painted” finish was lifted from the surface, and why it was coming up so quickly when I applied the Adhesive remover.





So with the dumpster here, and the need make progress, I started consolidated some boxes by throwing some of the racedeck flooring down.







Which went down very quickly.... a little too quickly. This stuff is borderline therapeutic.

 

[bowditchsmith]

Will leave it here for the night. I am very pleased with how easy this stuff is to work with!

 

[Jayman17]

Nice looking floor. I like the colors and pattern.

Jay

 

[bowditchsmith]

Photo dump, until I can get back to provide some narrative.

Alright Day 2, every one knows the rules. Fired through the second bay quickly. Spend a bit of extra time ensuring that the floor was centered prior to committing to any cuts.





Slowly shuffled the contents of the garage around to accommodate the panels going down.



The rear corner was pretty flush, and allowed me to put the panels down without the need for cuts (tucked right underneath the drywall gap) So I decided to throw one of the new racks that I had ordered up, to give things a place to sit other than the floor.



Now onto the fun part, individual tile cuts.



Taptalk mostly image cap!!! - more to come tonight

 

[bowditchsmith]

Alright, back pedaling some notes on the progress here. I didn’t love the placement of the storage rack, so after some playing around I decided to place it in the recessed area off in the back, and put the work top that was intended for the recess against the back wall.

Cabinets and lockers will go where the rack was previously placed along back wall on the left hand side.

Temporary tire storage worked out perfectly under the new worktop (about 1/4” to spare)

Trimmed all the edge cuts

Unsure what to do with the sides here. it’s only about an inch to the wall, which sees like a huge waist of tiles, but we’ll see if it starts to bother me.

Found this guy living in the shop vac yesterday. I assumed he had left the garage, but found him making a new nest. I released him into the woods in our backlot, we'll see if he makes his way back.

Still unsure what to do with with recessed area. Thinking about building some new storage shelves for it. Possibly stacked wheel racks, or even a vertical mount for my mountain bikes.

Done for the night…

Plenty more to come. I plan to start getting the cabinets up later this week, and hopefully some paint on the walls next week.

 

[bugnut]

Floor is looking really nice lotta work to get there!

 

[bowditchsmith]

Was getting sick of looking at the locker pallets facedown on the trailer. I knew I needed to remove them this week so that I could toss the pallets and all the packaging material this week.

broke it all down to inspect for damage, and moved them into the garage. Overall I am very pleased with them, and look forward to getting them mounted later this week.

 

[bowditchsmith]

Alright, time for an update

Started the morning by throwing the cabinets in:

Had a slight challenge due to the lally columns forcing me to bring the entire wall out 3.5":

Added a rear wall behind the counter to close up the gap:

Threw an old TV on the counter for now, might go with something slightly smaller, but regardless It will be mounted to the rear wall in order to keep the counter clear:

Dedicated Garage Computer: primarily for youtube, music, movies and garage journal:

Cracking a beer and I'm done for the night:

 

[M-technik-3]

Nice clean up of your space, The old space was typical New England. Down the road comes a new Garage? Oh is your bedrooms above the garage? Try to seal off with a vapor control for the living space above.

 

[bowditchsmith]

Nice clean up of your space, The old space was typical New England. Down the road comes a new Garage? Oh is your bedrooms above the garage? Try to seal off with a vapor control for the living space above.

Appreciate it! it's getting there, still lots of progress to be made. The old house was great, had wonderful character dating back to the 1920's. We didn't outgrow the house as much as we did the area that we were living in.

In the new house We have a family room above the garage. It's a large space, with vaulted ceilings, large windows and a fireplace. Can you elaborate more on your thoughts regarding vapor control?

In the future, my hope would be to build a larger detached garage on our rear plot to allow for some more substantial projects.

 

[DelayedZ]

Looks great, love the layout you chose with the flooring. I need to bite the bullet on racedeck.

 

[M-technik-3]

From a few houses I know that had living space above the garage fumes would find their way into the home. Not a fan of basement garages for that reason. Double layer of 5/8 fire code drywall and a vapor barrier with caulk on seams tends to keep out stink.

My gal lives nearby in Milbury. Your area has some nice quiet areas when you get out of the congestion.

 

[bowditchsmith]

From a few houses I know that had living space above the garage fumes would find their way into the home. Not a fan of basement garages for that reason. Double layer of 5/8 fire code drywall and a vapor barrier with caulk on seams tends to keep out stink.

My gal lives nearby in Milbury. Your area has some nice quiet areas when you get out of the congestion.

Gotcha. we haven't experienced any issues with fumes or draft from the garage (its pretty sustainably insulated right now, and I wouldn't be surprised if it already treated)

Prior to moving to Douglas, we had never been to, nor heard of the town, and there really isn't much out here. Primarily just forests and farmland. Not a single traffic light in town, plenty of spirited twisty roads, and 3 really sub par pizza places, all right next to one another.

But it's still 25 minutes to providence or to Worcester, and I was thrilled to get a commute back, as I enjoy driving. Although, I still haven't been able to make that commute since I've been working remotely since March.

 

[Kev442]

Putting out a saucer with about 5 drops of gasoline in it will answer the vapor question really quickly.
As a teen my bedroom was above the garage. I woke up one morning to a gasoline smell. It was a few drops from the carb overflow on my Honda Xl100. That house had no vapor barrier, that's for sure!

Garage is looking good.

 

[bowditchsmith]

Putting out a saucer with about 5 drops of gasoline in it will answer the vapor question really quickly.
As a teen my bedroom was above the garage. I woke up one morning to a gasoline smell. It was a few drops from the carb overflow on my Honda Xl100. That house had no vapor barrier, that's for sure!

Garage is looking good.

Interesting. I'll give it a try. We used the garage pretty actively prior to me starting the garage project, and we certainly hadn't noticed any fumes from the 2 cars below.

busy with work all day today (still on a call), so little progress was made today. Just assembled a work stool and added some new peripherals for the computer.

 

[bowditchsmith]

Played in the garage tonight. Figuring out best place for tool layouts in the new cabinet, but it was good to get back to wrenching (first time since we’ve been in the new house)